


Something New

by Lookathismoustache



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-18
Updated: 2013-02-18
Packaged: 2017-11-29 19:00:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/690360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lookathismoustache/pseuds/Lookathismoustache
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Surprisingly, when Bossuet begins to go bald, Joly is not the one who panics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something New

Surprisingly, when Bossuet begins to go bald, Joly is not the one who panics.

If he were the one waking up to discover he was losing his hair, Joly would be pacing the room, spitting out worried exclamations about the likelihood of an enlarged thyroid cutting off his breathing in the middle of the night. He’d be checking himself for tumors and moaning about the hundreds of possible autoimmune diseases he could have contracted. He’d be driving in a mad rush to the ER at three in the morning, where the nurses would have the hellish job of attempting to tell him that as a med student, he is not actually qualified to diagnose himself, and misdiagnose himself at that, no matter what he has to say to the contrary.

But it’s not him losing his hair, it’s Bossuet. And it doesn’t make any sense, because Bossuet is Joly’s best friend, and so rationally Joly should be even more worried. But Bossuet is also Joly’s calming presence, the only person that can keep him from losing his head in what would in any other case become a crisis, and so when he looks at Bossuet, Joly knows that balding does not mean cancer, does not mean disease, does not mean death. When he looks at Bossuet, he smiles, reassured in the knowledge that even though his friend is suffering, what he is suffering from is nothing more than early onset male-pattern baldness.

It had first been noticed the previous Wednesday, when Bossuet had rolled out of bed, bleary-eyed, with the several-days-late intention of shaving. As he’d passed by, Joly had remarked jokingly that it seemed Bossuet had more hair on his chin than he did on his head. Bossuet had turned a faux-pout back on his friend and walked into the bathroom, but he had nonetheless spent extra time in the mirror staring at his hair, whereupon he had let out a despairing shriek and bemoaned the fact that Joly's earlier remark had been right, in the worst way.

A week and a half later, the situation has only worsened, and Bossuet's panicking with it.

“For Christ’s sake, Joly,” the balding man wails presently, “I thought my luck couldn’t get any worse! I mean, how am I supposed to go out anywhere, looking like this? I’m going to have to buy a wig in order to even contemplate leaving the apartment. And it will itch like nobody’s business and you know Courfeyrac will end up pulling it off at every chance he gets because that man doesn’t have an ounce of self-restraint in his body, less when Grantaire is egging him on – and you know Grantaire will egg him on, because what could be more fun to a drunk than picking on a man who has begun balding at TWENTY-FIVE GODDAMN YEARS OF AGE?”

Glancing up from the textbook laid out on the coffee table, Joly cracks a smile. This morning’s rant had begun at promptly seven in the morning, even though they were still on reading break, and has been going on now for a solid forty-five minutes. Joly doesn’t exactly mind, but he does need to study sometime, and Bossuet is being quite loud with his admittedly amusing whining over the wig he now has to buy. The wig that, Joly decides resolutely as he watches Bossuet search fruitlessly through the sofa cushions for his keys, he needs to talk his friend out of buying.

Because Joly knows that while baldness does not come with any life-threatening side-effects, it does often come with low self-esteem and psychological stress. Joly also knows that these effects have obviously been taking a toll on Bossuet, because within the past few days usually calm man has worked himself into a state of panic reserved only for the worst of Joly’s health scares. And Joly knows that buying a wig is not going to rectify this state of panic.

A wig is only going to force Bossuet to hide this problem from everyone around him, and Joly doesn’t want Bossuet to have to hide, to be ashamed of a perfectly normal situation. What he wants is for Bossuet to get back his easygoing personality, his self-esteem, and he knows that so long as Bossuet is worrying about a clump of fake hair and what’s lacking underneath it, that is not going to happen. 

And besides, Bossuet would look terrible with a wig, never mind that he'd probably lose it anyway.

Shaking himself out of his thoughts, knowing he needs to act on his resolution before Bossuet can get out the door, Joly stands up, closes his textbook, and crosses from the kitchen into the living room, where Bossuet is now swerving wildly, attempting to find a hat. Reaching Bossuet in just a few strides, he takes the other man’s hands, stilling them where Bossuet has been repeatedly running them through his thinning hair after giving up his search, looks him in the eye and says bluntly: “If a wig is going to cause you that much more trouble, then don’t buy one at all. Just be bald; it will save you from Courfeyrac’s shenanigans, and from spending money.” Bossuet stares down at Joly as though he’s crazy and opens his mouth, but before he can reply, Joly moves their intertwined hands down over Bossuet’s lips and continues.

“Money that you don’t have," Joly teases, "since you spent it all last night on your quest to ‘drown your sorrows in the drink’, because you are going bald, and there is nothing you can do to stop it.” Joly chuckles at the affronted look on Bossuet’s face, and then grins happily as his friend’s expression transforms into a sheepish smile. After a moment, Bossuet lets out a self-deprecating chuckle of his own and drops his head down onto Joly’s shoulder.

He shakes his head at the entire situation. Lost car keys, wasted money, rapidly balding head, and forthcoming humiliation courtesy of the idiots he calls his friends. It’s a bad lot, but not a surprising one for him, and he knows well that in these situations there are only two options: laugh or cry. Standing there in his living room with his best friend, Bossuet takes the well-traveled path, the one he knows he’ll take every time he’s thrown another curve in this cursed life of his. He laughs, a full bodied laugh that grows in exuberance when he feels the man beside him start to laugh as well.

Bossuet laughs, and he doesn’t stop laughing until several minutes later when Joly finally decides to extricate himself from Bossuet’s arms. Joly doesn’t step back when he sees the suddenly serious face Bossuet is now levelling at him, only flashes him another crooked smile as he takes the tall man’s head in his hands and, pulling it down, lays a quick kiss right where smooth skin meets thinning hair.

And this is something new. Suddenly what's between them is so far from the calming, friendly reassurance Joly had meant for it to be, and he's not quite sure how it happened or what he's supposed to do now that it has. He feels rather than sees the sharp intake of breath as Bossuet all but shudders beneath him but he does not recoil, does not move his lips from where they are resting softly on the crown off Bossuet's head.

Because this is something new, but not really. There have been moments before where Joly had wondered, where he'd caught a glimpse of something similar to the feeling that is now curled in the pit of his stomach. A hug held a little too long, a too-serious glance in the midst of hurried ABC activities. Nothing like this of course, but flashes that promised that whatever it was that was so close to revealing itself in this moment was something that had been a long time coming.

As he contemplates this not-quite turn of events, Joly reaches almost to the point where he'd begin to worry, to fear the worst and not be talked out of it. But this is Bossuet, and Bossuet is his calming presence, so Joly doesn't worry, just stands quietly over the other man for a moment, distracted by the way his friend has gone completely still under his hands, before murmuring softly into Bossuet’s remaining hair.

“Besides, I think you will look even more dashing without hair than you do with it. And you, my friend, look already impossibly dashing with hair, so that’s saying something.”

It's a light comment, something to wipe away the tension of the previous moments without quote ignoring that they'd happened. And with it, Joly lets go of Bossuet’s head. With a final, bright-eyed look at his friend, walks back into the kitchen, opening up his textbook and resuming his studies now that he has succeeded both in quieting the apartment and, hopefully, restoring Bossuet to his normal self. He refuses to acknowledge the blood he knows is rushing to his cheeks, and focuses instead on the medical jargon lining the page in front of him.

Bossuet, for his part, is definitely not laughing anymore. He stands in the living room staring at Joly's back, marveling at the memory of the med student's lips on his skin, and realizes that the previously life-ruining recession of his hairline is suddenly absolutely worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not really sure what happened here. It began with sudden inspiration at 2AM, and ended with the help of a couple friends and a lot of coffee. First it was funny, then it was fluff, and then there were suddenly feelings and it got way more serious than I had ever anticipated.


End file.
